In late 2022, Ghana faced a severe fiscal and debt crisis. The Government launched the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP), asking holders of domestic cedi bonds to swap their existing bonds for new ones with longer maturities and lower coupons.
Retail investors who had bought government bonds — often through banks and fund managers, and often under the impression that "government bonds are safe" — took real haircuts on the present value of their holdings.
Three lessons that still matter:
1. "Risk-free" is a model assumption, not a guarantee. Even sovereign debt carries risk, especially in frontier markets. 2. Know what you own. Many DDEP-affected retail investors did not fully understand the maturity, issuer, or legal form of their holdings. Nkosuo's portfolio view exists partly to fix that. 3. Diversify across instruments and currencies. Treasury bills, equities, money-market funds, and USD-denominated instruments behave differently under stress.
DDEP damaged trust in Ghanaian capital markets — deservedly so. Rebuilding that trust is slow, source-first work. It is the work we are here to do.